The Desert Here and the Desert Far Away by Marcus Sakey

Author:Marcus Sakey [Sakey, Marcus]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Literature & Fiction, Short Stories, Single Author, Mystery; Thriller & Suspense, Thrillers, Suspense, Single Authors, Crime Fiction
Amazon: B00HNUN6T2
Goodreads: 8731369
Publisher: StoryFront
Published: 2010-01-01T08:00:00+00:00

In the movies, former soldiers wake up in a sweat, fresh from nightmares of a war that never ends. Not you. You don’t dream at all these days. You stretch, make coffee, shower, pull on your boots. Kill a couple of hours at a coffee shop, staring out at nothing.

The Bronco you stored in your parents’ garage while deployed is sun faded, and the air conditioner doesn’t work, but driving it you feel something like your old self. Cooper is waiting on the corner, hands tucked into the front pouch of a hoodie the day is already too warm for. He climbs in, pulls a CD from his pocket, Slayer’s Reign in Blood. You know it well. Maybe in Vietnam it was Wagner, but in the desert it was always heavy metal.

You ask, “Where?”

“A parking garage.” He gives you the intersection. “I’m supposed to meet him with the money in an hour. Figured we’d get there first, scope it out.”

The garage is off the Strip, set amidst warehouses being converted to lofts for whoever lives in lofts. The ramp spirals up through six stories. The top floor is open to the sky. A handful of expensive vehicles are scattered far apart. Car fetishists, terrified of every ding and scratch. You park forty feet from the stairwell, on the far side of the ramp.

The sun is brutal, burning the sky white. The windows are open, and the sweat slicking your chest feels familiar. “It’s good.”

Cooper nods.

“How many?”

“At least two.”

“Armed?”

He nods again. You take a breath, look around. Electricity crackles and snaps between your fingers, the same old feeling you used to get as the squad mounted up. With terrain like this, there’s no reason even to discuss the plan. “Okay,” you say.

Cooper opens the door, pauses. Turns to look at you. “Nick—”

“Forget it,” you say. The two of you share the kind of look that only men who’ve gone to war together can. Then he slides out of the car and walks over to the stairwell, leans against the wall.

You sit behind the wheel for a moment, listening to the relentless hammer of the heavy metal. Remembering Fritz, the gunner for your Stryker’s forward weapons team, a skinny kid with a Missouri twang and a pinch of Skoal perpetually in the pouch of his lip. “Two hundred ten beats a minute,” he’d said, and smiled. At the time you thought he was talking about his heart.

You turn off the engine and get out. Stand for a moment in the sun, the same sun that lights the other side of the world. You twist the passenger mirror up at an angle, then take a breath, go prone, and wriggle underneath the truck.

It isn’t long before you hear a car climbing the ramp. The sound gets louder, fainter, then louder again as the car winds to the top. You take a deep breath and remember the best night you ever had, how you mastered your fear and let yourself believe.

The problem with the best moment of your life is that every other moment is worse.

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